Caius Marcius Coriolanus

while in exploits of a strange and extraordinary nature, requiring some rush of inspiration, and desperate courage, he does not represent the god as taking a way, but as prompting, a man’s choice of action; nor yet as creating impulses in a man, but rather conceptions which lead to impulses, and by these his action is not made involuntary, but his will is set in motion, while courage and hope are added to sustain him.

For either the influence of the gods must be wholly excluded from all initiating power over our actions, or in what other way can they assist and co-operate with men? They certainly do not mould our bodies by their direct agency, nor give the requisite change to the action of our hands and feet, but rather, by certain motives, conceptions, and purposes, they rouse the active and elective powers of our spirits, or, on the other hand, divert and check them.

Now in Rome, at the time of which I speak, various groups of women visited the various temples, but the greater part of them, and those of highest station, carried their supplications to the altar of Jupiter Capitolinus. Among these was Valeria, a sister of that Publicola who had done the Romans so many eminent services both as warrior and statesman. Publicola, indeed, had died some time before, as I have related in his Life;[*](Chapter xxiii.) but Valeria was still enjoying her repute and honour in the city, where her life was thought to adorn her lineage.

This woman, then, suddenly seized with one of those feelings which I have been describing, and laying hold of the right expedient with a purpose not uninspired of heaven, rose up herself; bade the other women all rise, and came with them to the house of Volumnia,[*](Then the matrons came in a body to Veturia, the mother of Coriolanus, and Volumnia, his wife. Whether this was the result of public counsel, or of the women’s fear, I cannot ascertain.—Livy, ii. 40, 1. In Dionysius also (vii. 39, 40), whom Plutarch seems otherwise to be following, Verturia is the mother, and Volumnia the wife, of Marcius.) the mother of Marcius. After entering and finding her seated with her daughter-in-law, and holding the children of Marcius on her lap, Valeria called about her the women who had followed, and said:

We whom thou seest here, Volumnia, and thou, Vergilia, are come as women to women, obeying neither senatorial edict nor consular command; but our god, as it would seem, taking pity on our supplication, put into our hearts an impulse to come hither to you and beseech you to do that which will not only be the salvation of us ourselves and of the citizens besides, but also lift you who consent to do it to a more conspicuous fame than that which the daughters of the Sabines won, when they brought their fathers and husbands out of war into friendship and peace.